Sunday, April 7, 2013

Color Crayon Challenge

The quilt guild I belong to recently hosted a Color Crayon Challenge. Each member blindly picked three crayons and was challenged to "make something" using all three colors. It was amazing to see what everyone came up with - we have such a creative group!

My colors were tan, light blue and violet.

Since I've been loving mixed media lately, I decided to create a fabric mixed media book. I incorporated a mix of techniques, including machine stitching, hand embroidery, painting and stamping. I wanted the feeling of the book to be free and loose, so I didn't draw out any of the shapes ahead of time. I just cut and sewed, leaving the raw edges exposed for added texture.

Front Cover

I created each page, and then "bound" the book together by sandwiching stabilizer between two pages at a time and machine stitching around the perimeter. Then I bound all of the pages together with a large blanket stitch using embroidery floss.

This was such a fun project, and definitely outside of my comfort zone! I used free motion quilting to sew most of the fabric pieces in place. I decided ahead of time that I wanted to look to be rough, and it's amazing how much easier it was to free motion quilt when I did not pressure myself to make it look perfect! A great way to practice your free motion quilting skills. I definitely look forward to creating more projects like this :)